dhanson865

64gb samsung 830 used as a boot drive for a couple of years in win xp, less than a year in win 7, and now back in a win xp PC. I store all the daily use apps like web browser, email, and my most played game on the boot drive. Only 1.86 TB written to date.

Last time I bought a HD 640GB was considered a performance drive and SSDs were measured in MB.

Agreed, it'll help but it's no guarantee. I have way back in the day used a damaged HD to copy files from one PC to another when I had no other option. I copied the files to the HD 3 to 5 times depending on space allowed and it took forever because even during the writing process it'd hit bad sectors, then copying back I had to manually keep track of which ones failed to read and copy them from one of the duplicates. It's a total pain in the rear if it's loose files in a complex directory structure. The next time I had that situation (yes unfortunately I had to do this sort of thing more than once), I zipped the files into one larger file and then copied it multiple times. Good news was it was less trouble to see if it worked, bad news was it's all or nothing a corrupted zip file gives you nothing usefull. I had to switch to multiple smaller zip files. Of course now days I'd use 7zip instead of pkzip but more importantly I'd consider copying to the disk, burning a CD, and even storing on a $5 usb flash drive (4GB). Each has a different failure mode if you do all 3 maybe one will survive when the other doesn't.

With SSDs finally cheap why bother with WD Black anymore? Just make the WD Blue and Green, and Velociraptor. Heck I'd even consider dropping the 3.5 Blue and Black and make a 7200 RPM version of the velociraptor for the new Blue line. Make it 7200 RPM or 8000 RPM or 6000 RPM (since the 10,000 doesn't go by the 1800 rpm multiples I suppose they have leeway to choose any RPM they like for the value version of the velociraptor). Right now the internal desktop page shows top capacity by line of 3TB Green 2TB Black 1TB Blue 1TB Velociraptor It's four drives out of two platter sizes. The Black is being squeezed on speed by SSDs and capacity by the Green. Simplify the lines and transition away from excess R&D / materials costs. The simplest version would be 3TB Green 1TB Velociraptor (10,000 RPM) 1TB Velociraptor Green or Blue (however they want to market the smaller lower RPM drive)

BIOS SMART options are enabled Drives include Samsung 830 SSD (64GB) from 2012. WD20EARS (2TB SATA from 2011) WD6400AAKS (640GB SATA) WD2500KS (250GB SATA from 2006) While it might be OK to occasionally boot into another OS to check or even move the drives to another motherboard with an older controller I'd like to get SMART data visible within windows on this motherboard.

I moved my CPU/HS/drives from a M2A-VM (690G chipset with DDR2) to a M5A97 (970 chipset with DDR3) and reinstalled windows from the same XP SP3 CD. The only variable is the motherboard change. I can't see SMART data in speedfan, crystal disk info, Samsung SSD magician, or HDTune. The drives work perfectly and show in disk management, device manager, POST, and BIOS. They haven't shown the slightest bit of flakiness. I'm assuming this is either an issue with the AMD AHCI driver for the chipset or an issue with the ASUS BIOS. I'm using 0901 and the short list of bios options are: Version 0901 1. Improve syatem stability. Version 0810 Beta 1. Update AMD CPU firmware. Version 0705 1. Support new CPUs. As to the AHCI driver I'm using 3.2.1540.92 which aren't the latest from AMD but are the latest on the ASUS web site. Does anybody know the fix for this issue or should I just wait for the BIOS to mature before spending much effort on this?

you mention two versions but I have to wonder if they didn't just show two drawings to show the single connector design could work with old and new drives (new having the "tabs protruding" as you called them).

If you think it's only "some" controllers you are being misled. All SSDs have slower writes on lower capacity drives.

another day another review read.

Merry Christmas indeed. Time for me to get in bed and snuggle. I hope everyone is warm and dry tonight.

Doh, I missed posting on page 42! You know there has to be a winner on page 42.

I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a SSD today.

indeed

rough year here, gonna bake a few home made pies and have a little turkey breast but the "mashed potatoes" will be powdered.

The WD Hitachi deal is delayed to at least early 2012. I don't expect it to fall through as hitachi wants out of the hard drive business but there is a lot left to it. see for quotes on that matter.

The Hitachi deal was announced but had to wait for regulatory (government) approval before completing. That often takes months if not a year or more. Even after that it will take additional months if not another year to get rid of the name if they choose to do so. Hitachi hard drives could be made forever by WD just like linkys products made by Cisco (that purchase was 8 years ago). Hitachi will probably own about 10 percent of Western Digital stock at the time of the purchase and it only got EU conditional approval last month (Nov 2011). It still hasn't been finalized even after 9 months since the first announcement. Hitachi said that the deal, which had been expected to be completed in the October-December quarter, is now expected to be finalized by March 2012. Hitachi's president says "very concerned" about possible further delays in sale of hard disk drive business to Western Digital -- Delay beyond March would affect Hitachi's cash flow forecasts for current fiscal year Western Digital Corp has yet to gain approval from various international regulators. "Authorities are continuing to examine the deal, and it's not clear what China will say,"

I mentioned in a prior thread the numbers from April 2011, I'll grab new numbers for this thread. Seagate: 27.22% + Maxtor: 2.18% + Samsung 14.64% = ~44% (down ~1% from April 2011) Western Digital: 27.32% + Hitachi: 11.04% = ~38% (down ~1% from April 2011) Toshiba: 5.01% + Fujitsu: 0.88% = ~6% (Fujitsu drives are less common now but Toshiba gained share enough to compensate leaving the overall percentage roughly unchanged.) And the rest are SSDs or specialty drives of some other type (Intel being the largest share at 2.3%) Brain mentioned the flooding hurting WD more than Seagate but the SSD marketshare is eating away at both so in these numbers expect WD to drop faster than Seagate. Don't expect Seagate to gain marketshare.

It's time for pancakes

OMG this MWI thread is massive, http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?271063-SSD-Write-Endurance-25nm-Vs-34nm

it's below freezing outside my house as I type this.

And to update the list I made in an earlier post it looks like this early in 2012 SG Barracuda XT 3 year SG Barracuda 1 year WD Caviar Black 5 year WD Caviar Blue 2 year WD Caviar Green 2 year SG Momentus XT 3 year SG Momentus 1 year WD Scorpio Black 5 year WD Scorpio Blue 2 year Is that really right? Is WD Black the only consumer grade drive left with a 5 year warranty? And only Seagate XT drives with 3 year warranty? If that list is right I can see people moving to WD Black for storage drives just for the warranty.

OK, you can rename this thread now. http://www.techpowerup.com/156962/Seagate-Take-A-Leaf-Out-Of-WD-s-Book-Offer-Crummy-ONE-YEAR-Warranties-On-Some-HDD-s.html Effective December 31, 2011, Seagate will be changing its warranty policy from a 5 year to a 3 year warranty period for Nearline drives, 5 years to 1 year for certain Desktop and Notebook Bare Drives, 5 years to 3 years on Barracuda XT and Momentus XT, and from as much as 5 years to 2 years on Consumer Electronics. Constellation 2 and ES.2 drives: 3 years Barracuda and Barracuda Green 3.5-inch drives: 1 year Barracuda XT: 3 years Momentus 2.5-inch (5400 and 7200rpm): 1 year Momentus XT: 3 years SV35 Series - Video Surveillance: 2 years Pipeline HD Mini, Pipeline HD: 2 years

It's beginning to look a lot like SSDness,

Unless you've seen news saying the deal didn't happen or won't happen Hitachi is part of WD so green drives are still only WD no matter which of the two names are on the label. Only Toshiba stands alone and they are a niche player. Big 1 Seagate: 27.20% + Maxtor: 3.45% + Samsung 14.64% = ~45% Big 2 Western Digital: 27.80% + Hitachi: 10.92% = ~39% the little guy Toshiba: 4.36% + Fujitsu: 1.38% = ~6% those market share numbers yanked from April 2011, didn't feel like pulling newer stats. If the consolidation continues it'd be easy to see WD absorb Toshiba/Fujitsu drives and make it a simple duopoly. Oh, and the other 10% is SSDs or other items that didn't easily fit in the consumer HD space.

man that 60% over-provisioned drive sounds nice, I'd rather it use the Marvell controller but if it's priced right even a Sandforce controller would do. http://www.storagereview.com/monster_digital_le_mans_ssd_family_announced